


Joke's On You

by atothej



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Feels, Blind Date, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atothej/pseuds/atothej
Summary: Clint's got a date. Except, it turns out, not really.





	1. The Blind Date

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to tumblr as a prompt fill.
> 
> **Mauverwrites:** _Hey if you’re still doing prompts from that list then I’d love to see number 14 (Also I love your writing omg) [14. our friends set us up on a blind date as a prank because we don’t like each other but neither of us wants to let them win so...]_

Clint nervously tugs at his tie, pulling it loose from it’s noose-like hold, only to remember that makes him look like an absolute _slob_, not to mention like he might be two drinks too far in, so he quickly sets back to straightening it again.

He’s just flattening his collar back in place when someone pulls out the seat right across from him and drops into it. Clint’s busy taking in how good the guy’s shoulders look in that leather jacket, how nice and tight his shirt underneath is pulling across his chest-–because _holy shit, he is never this lucky–-_when his blind date opens his mouth, and Clint simultaneously registers the familiar voice and mocking tone with dawning horror as the man across the table says, “Shit, Barton, is that a _tie_?”

Clint’s eyes snap up to Barnes’ smirking face and he glares for all he’s worth, stashing his hands under the edge of the tablecloth to hide the marks he’s clawing into his own skin, he’s clenching his fists so hard. “What are you doing here?” Clint bites out shortly. “Fuck off.”

“_I’m _here for a date,” Barnes drawls as he leans over the table to balance his chin on his prosthetic palm. “What are _you _here for, I wonder?”

Clint’s stomach sinks down low even as his heart’s trying to climb up and out his throat. “What?” he croaks.

“Yeah.” Barnes shifts off the table to scoop up a menu, flipping it open and glancing over it casually. “Our friends are assholes. What else is new?”

Clint thinks about Steve constantly throwing his disappointed frown their way whenever they start up another argument loosely fueled by their differing opinions on sniper nests and where they should be set up. He thinks about Tony rolling his eyes and muttering scathingly about how they should just lock them in a closet and see who makes it out alive. He thinks about Natasha pointedly steering him right back out of any room where Barnes has already set up shop.

Clint’s head drops down as he focuses on getting his breathing back to something like even, in and out, out and in. He can feel a cold sweat breaking out all over his skin, making an already uncomfortable suit that much more unbearable, and he resolutely refuses to acknowledge the sad little bodega bouquet wrapped in newspaper laying in a lump just out of the corner of his eye.

“So…not actually a date, then,” Clint mutters dejectedly.

Finally looking up over the top of his menu, Barnes does a double-take and lays out an emphatic, “_Shit_.” He lowers the menu and his shoulders drop back as he leans into his chair. “You’re seriously _trying,” _he groans, waving at Clint and the flowers that he’s not admitting he brought. “You really came here hoping to hit it off with a blind date. Ugh. _Assholes_, the whole lot of ‘em.”

Clint slumps down in his chair and pulls his arms up to cross them over his chest. “Says Asshole Numero Uno.”

“Look, I’m sorry you got dragged into this, okay?” Barnes drags his flesh hand back through his hair, upsetting the careful balance of his bun and knocking it off center so that some loose strands escape to fall around his face. “You’re a dorky little romantic at heart and they all _know that_, and it was a shitty prank to go playin’ on us in general, but you in particular.”

“No way,” Clint protests, shaking his head back and forth. “Tasha wouldn’ta–-” He refuses to even entertain the idea that his best friend would have waylaid him like this, sending him out in his Sunday best to get ambushed by futzing Barnes. No, Barnes found out about Clint’s blind date somehow, and he’s an _asshole, _so of course he showed up just to ruin it–-

Clint chokes back a sob and rubs furiously at his stinging eyes.

“Hey!” Barnes’ hand darts out across the table and clamps around Clint’s wrist, pulling his arm away from his face. Clint twists his hand around and rips it out of Barnes’ grip and puts his arm right back where he needed it. “Aw, don’t _cry_, Barton.”

“I’m not crying!” he insists petulantly from behind the safety of his soggy sleeve.

“Here, look!” Barnes says, making another desperate grab for Clint’s hand but only succeeding in getting Clint’s arm away from his face because Clint can’t very well glare at him if he can’t _see_ him, only-–well.

Barnes is leaning across the table, yeah, and while one hand is tangled up in Clint’s jacket sleeve, the other is holding out a single rose, fresh-cut and vibrant-colored and sweet-smelling. While Clint’s distracted by the utter dissonance of _Barnes offering him a rose_, the jerk manages to get Clint’s fingers to uncurl and wrap around the delicate stem, effectively handing it off.

“Why…” Clint blinks down at the rose, then glances up suspiciously at Barnes’ attempt at a contrite expression. “Why’re you being nice to me all of a sudden?”

“Well, I mean–-” Barnes’ mouth tugs to the side like he can’t make up his mind what he should be doing with it, and he rips the band out of his hair with a frustrated yank only to flip his hair right back out of his face in agitation. “I’m an asshole, yeah?” he admits with a shrug. “But I’m not a dick.”

Clint has some choice responses to that, but actually saying them out loud right now would make _him_ the dick, and for once in his life he successfully keeps his mouth from digging the hole deeper and deeper, instead keeping decidedly silent and rolling the stem of the rose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hey,” Barnes keeps on when it’s glaringly obvious that Clint isn’t about to say anything. “Whaddya say we show those other assholes up and actually sit here and eat and have a good time, huh?” He reaches out to scoop the menu back up, smoothly pulling the bouquet still laying on Clint’s side of the table over as well. “These are for me, right?” he asks with a cheeky smirk, and Clint just rolls his eyes and lets it happen.

“What? The best revenge is living well or whatever,” Barnes says with a distracted air, his focus already back on perusing the food delicacies on offer. “That’s, like, a saying or some shit, I’ve definitely heard it said before.”

“I mean, you got the gist, I guess?” Clint mumbles uncertainly, setting the rose down in favor of flipping open his own menu with a befuddled frown.

Barnes eyes suddenly light up and shoot over to lock onto Clint’s wary gaze, mischief etched into every line of his grin. “You know what we should do?” He ploughs on without any encouragement from Clint, but he doesn’t seem to really need any, so. “We order just the one dessert, right? And take a picture with the two forks on the plate, and the flowers off to the side. Text it to all of ‘em, and then shut off our phones for the rest of the night. That'll show 'em.”

_Show 'em what?_ Clint wants to ask, but he doesn't much want to hear the answer, so he just nods agreeably and quietly goes back to his menu.


	2. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint would just like to wallow in his own misery now, please.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mishasorangeundies:** _awww this is cute!! is there more? please let there be more!_

Clint’s too used to waking up with Nat looming ominously over him for her to startle him anymore.

And on this particular morning, tired, hungover, and more than a little bit pissed at her, Clint blinks up at her once then twists away from her hand on his shoulder, turning his back on her and closing his eyes to go right back to sleep.

There’s a forceful yank on his comforter, but Clint grew up with an asshole of a brother and he’s well used to defending his bedding territories. “I’m not talking to you right now,” he grumbles lowly, his own voice a garbled mess of too-deep vibrations.

One of his BTEs is slipped over his exposed ear and flipped on. “Good. Maybe that means you’ll actually listen for once.”

“Fuck _off_, Natasha.”

“I will as soon as you roll over and have an actual, adult conversation with me,” Natasha replies placidly, the bed shifting subtly as she slides in to sit up against the headboard, her hip just brushing along Clint’s shoulder blade.

Clint bites out into the depths of his hypoallergenic memory foam monstrosity of a pillow a decided, “Fuck. You.”

Nat flicks at his ear, making his aid screech with a sharp whine of feedback. “How many times do I need to say it before it finally sinks into that thick skull of yours, huh? You two would get on just fine if you’d stop being assholes to each other for two seconds.”

“He started it,” Clint grumbles petulantly.

“Technically speaking,” Nat shoots back, so fast she’s talking over his complaining, and it’s that tone of hers that’s always accompanied by the Look of Ultimate Judgement. “You freaked out when you heard the hot guy from the American History books you used to jerk off to was coming to live in the Tower and then overcorrected all the way to raging asshole the second you actually met him as some kind of fucked up defense mechanism.”

“He’s the one who walked in with his stupid smug face all smug and shit.”

“You mean his first time meeting the whole team? All at once? After Steve’d been talking everybody up for weeks and making Barnes inadvertently insecure about his place in Steve’s life in the future? I’m sorry, but do you think the word “smug” means_ scared shitless_?”

“Whatever.”

“You two seemed to be getting along fine last night.” Her voice drops to that low, lulling lilt as she shifts the topic just off of center. “Judging by all the selfies you spammed us with.”

“That was all his idea, to rub it in your faces for being _dicks_.”

Natasha snorts indelicately. “Unlikely. Barnes isn’t this good an actor,” she parries, and she must be flipping through the futzing album worth of shots Barnes’d made Clint pose for last night.

Clint pops his head up out of his blanket cocoon with the express intention of detailing all the ways that Barnes is, in fact, a dirty liar, liar, pants on fire, but he’s interrupted by the lights overhead flashing in a pattern that JARVIS uses to let Clint know when someone’s knocking at his door.

“Are you going to get that?” she asks after Clint’s stared up at the ceiling in bewilderment for too many long moments, her voice all sugary sweet innocence but her expression a mask of amused shrewdness packed into one precisely raised eyebrow.

Clint rolls off the bed with enough _umph _to swipe the comforter out from under Nat, but she’s like fine china in that she doesn’t even twitch a movement, just keeps sprawling out on his bed indolently. Grumbling as he goes, Clint shucks his blanket in the bedroom doorway and keeps marching on in his ratty sleep pants, legs spread out wider than usual because this pair has lost even a hint of elastic in the waistband, but they’re still so futzing soft Clint refuses to give up on them.

As he rounds into the living area of his suite, he can finally pick up the actual sound of the knocking through his one aid, a steady thumping that goes double every third knock. Clint rips open the door with a scowl firmly in place, but before he can demand what the hell whoever it is _wants _this early in the godforsaken morning, a huge cup of coffee is thrust right at his chest, and he has to scramble to catch it. The paper sleeve around it does little to dull the warmth seeping out and into his fingertips.

With a confused furrow scrunching up between the gap over his nose, Clint looks up to blink at Barnes in utter bewilderment.

“It’s coffee,” Barnes drawls, raising his own cup to his lips and sipping pointedly.

“So, what?” Clint glances back down at the cup distrustfully. “It’s poisoned?”

Barnes rolls his eyes and huffs a sigh out his nose. “Look, I’m man enough to admit we _maybe_ overdid it on the booze last night-–”

“Uh, is this where I jump in with an _I told you so_? ‘Cause–”

“But hey,” Barnes steamrolls right on through Clint’s interruption with a grin that might be termed cheery were it on someone else’s face. “What’s a little hangover when you’re drinking on Stark’s dime, you know?”

Clint’s own head is thumping dully now that he’s been upright for more than a minute, like the change in air pressure from the level of the bed to his regular height is just too much to handle. “Do super solders even get hangovers?” he wonders absently, still eyeing the coffee warily.

On the one hand, free coffee. On the other hand, provided by Barnes. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Barnes scoffs as he shifts his weight over so that he’s leaning against the door jamb, sneakily getting in the way of Clint slamming the door on him because JARVIS has protocols in place to prevent anything he deems _friendly fire._ “Hey, that new long range training sim Stark’s been raving about for weeks is finally active. You up for it? Or you gonna go nurse the toilet bowl to sleep?”

The easy, open invitation throws Clint off right out the gate, and he’s left standing there wrong-footed and gaping. “Just-–” he manages to husk out after a too-long pause. He should really just drink this coffee. He needs caffeine to make sense of this morning, and if it’s poisoned, well–-he won’t have to worry about being confused anymore. “Let me, uh, grab. Clothes?” Clint finally stutters out.

Barnes shoots him a grin that’s all flirtatious charm as his eyes make a slow sweep of Clint from bedhead to bare feet. “I mean, if you insist.”

Clint beats a hasty retreat back into his bedroom, where he diligently ignores the all-knowing gleam Nat’s got about her while he pops his other aid in place, shucks on a pair of jeans, and scoops up a t-shirt from off the floor that doesn’t look to have any obvious stains on it.

He gets his head and one arm through the shirt, but then he’s stymied when it comes to the one that's attached to the hand holding his coffee. Nat chuckles meanly because she is the _worst_ and doesn’t even offer to help him.

He ducks back out of his room with his shirt only half on just to escape her, snapping out a belligerent, “_Shut up_,” before tipping his head back to finally gulp down some sweet, sweet life juice. The way this day is shaping up to be, he’s going to need it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr at [promptmewinterhawk](http://promptmewinterhawk.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
